The Best Birthday Ever

Hello my faithful readers.  The end is in sight.  As of this moment, I am a mere 114.5 from Katahdin, in Monson, ME, a small town just south of the One Hundred Mile Wilderness.  It seems like it was years ago that I first shouldered my pack at Amamcola, yet it also seems like it was only yesterday.  Time sure does fly.

I guess getting older makes one more melodramatic, being 19 does that.  Oh yeah, in case you missed the hint in the title, I had a birthday.  More about that later, first I must pick up where I left off--the Hostel in Gorham where we had retreated from the weather of the Whites.

While we had done the bulk of the Whites, we had one ridge left: the Wildcats.  We left the hostel late-ish and found a cool campsite less than a mile from Pinkham Notch at the foot of our 2,000 foot climb (in 2 miles, because switchbacks are for wimps).  Due to our lazy pace off of Madison, and our lazy out of Gorham, we had done 5 miles in two days, putting us behind schedule. We did the logical response: hike a 19 in the toughest section of the trail.  Yes, what a brilliant idea...

We did it, but we were bushed the next day. We did an easy 16 to the peak of Mt. Success.  We camped up in the alpine zone this one time and it was awesome.  It was also very windy.  We layered up, found a grove of pine, hunkered down, and slept like babies.  It was also fitting that we slept on Mt. Success because we were less than 2 miles from the Maine border, a huge achievement.

Before I move on, I must be the bearer grievous news--Excalibur bit the dust.  The stick that had been a trusty companion since NJ, and now it is no more.  I lost the bottom 8 inches saving myself from a fall.  It briefly became Anduril, the Flame of the West, reforged from the shards of Narsil.  But he stick was too short, so I stuck it in a moss bank, and moved on.  Several days later, I found Loki, my replacement trekking pole.  Loki and Voldey, my trekking pole are named after notorious villains.

We entered ME the next morning and promptly enjoyed all the rough terrain the southern ME has to offer.  Full of rock scrambles, bogs, roots, and more, southern ME beats you black and blue (literally).  We ended that day with what our guidebook labeled as the, "most difficult or fun mile of the AT,"--Mahoosuc Notch.  Mahoosuc is a ravine filled with massive boulders that you hop, scramble, crawl, weave, and ninja your way through.  Most SOBOs we talked to said the average time to get through the Notch was 2 hours.  I forgot to look at the exact time that I entered, but I did see the time when I left the shelter 1.6 miles before it.  I left the shelter at 3:45, I was walking out of the Notch at 5:20.  1 hour, 35 minutes for 2.6 mile with the Notch being one of those miles.  What was the secret?  Well, as they say: when the going gets tough, the T Mac gets pumping.

We hiked into Andover the next evening, where enjoyed the homely--but overpriced--comforts of local hostel.  What should have been a $35-45 resupply ended up costing just shy of $70!  Oh well, I knew that it was going to be more expensive going North into the land of one-street towns, but still... Yikes!

The next section was nice.  The terrain mellowed out for the most part, and we entered the land of 10,000 ponds.  We still had the climbs of Saddleback, Crocker, and the Bigelow ridges, but they were not the same rock scrambles and climbs of the Whites.  The weather was great; cool in the evenings and morning, but hot enough during the day to make for perfect swimming opportunities in the streams and ponds.  It was in this paradise of trail that the most important day of the year rolled around--my birthday.

You must understand, I traditionally have had a blueberry pie on my birthday.  It started when I was turning 5, I believe, and every year since then without fail I have had a pie made by my awesome mother.  I wanted to pack out a pie, but Andover had an appalling lack of pies, so I was forced to go for a blueberry Pop Tart instead.  We slept in, swam in a creek, and pulled a lazy 16.  All-in-all, it was the best birthday ever, even considering the lack of blueberry pie.

We resupplied in Stratton at a much more reasonable price, and headed out.  We hiked the Bigelows the next day, our last 2,000 foot climb until Katahdin.  The following night we were at Pierce Pond shelter.  This was the best swimming yet and the sunset was drop dead gorgeous.

After roughly three weeks of 15-17 miles a day, we did a 23 to Moxie Bald shelter.  It felt good to actually to do a serious chunk of trail.  Anyways, that day we had to cross on the famous Kennebec River ferry, the only ferry on the AT.  On the northern shore, I got my second taste of fame (my first was an appearance in a Hank Williams Junior music video).  A reporter from the Wall Street Journal was doing a piece on the ferry.  So we got featured in the prestigious WSJ, not bad, if a I do say so myself.

(Photo Courtesy of Debbie Morrison via Facebook)

We rolled into Monson the next evening where we are resupplying for the One Hundred Mile Wilderness and the final push to Katahdin.  We expect to summit around the 29, which brings our hike to a grand total of 145 days for 2189.8 miles of awesomeness.  I hold that date loosely (Baxter SP limits the number of hiker allowed to summit each day, and we have hit a bubble of hikers, so competition for those slots will be high), but we will summit by the end of this month for sure.